Scott McCausland was convicted of illegally downloading one of the Star Wars series some time in 2005. He’s now under probation after serving five months in prison.

A condition of his probation includes him consenting to periodic checks on his computer by a probation officer and/or monitoring software. McCausland in not against this, but apparently the monitoring software only supports Windows and not McCausland’s current OS, Ubuntu Linux:

“I am consenting to all of it, but it just so happens that the OS I use might not be supported by the software they use to monitor. So I do not feel (neither does my lawyer) that the government can force me to switch OS.”

McCausland has now started an appeal on his website to cover the cost of buying Windows.

So what’s a pirate to do in this situation? Launch a “Windows Tip Jar Campaign” of course 😛

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